JULY 14 / Arugula Garden of Eden

Houston Chronicle editorials express many emotions -- disappointment, contempt, anger -- but almost never joy. On Saturday, however, the paper was near giddy.

It was like seeing Al Gore smile -- something rare to occur, awkward to execute, embarrassing to observe.

Why the splashy joy in Mudville? 

Because "[f]rom May to June, the number of bikes [per day?] loaded onto Metro buses jumped from about 83 to about 121." Because Metro ridership increased 6 percent from October through March. Because 6 percent of Texas AAA members "have switched to car- or van-pooling."

Because Montgomery County "at lightning speed" set up "a whole complement of new public transport services" and Fort Bend County started busing people to the Medical Center.

Because local gardeners are chattering about "tiny, ultra-efficient produce patches promoted by a United Kingdom charity as an anti-starvation tool, suitable in Houston for "arugula, yard long [read yard-long] beans and suyu [read Soyu] cucumbers."

(Anyone gone to Whole Foods lately and seen what they're charge for arugula? I mean, they're charging a lot of money for this stuff.)

Finally -- and who wouldn't be ecstatic about this? -- because 30 to 40 people showed up at a July class on how to start community gardens.

So what had "softened resistance," as the Chronicle put it, to these "healthy behaviors?" What government program? What court decision? What nongovernmental organization? What hectoring editorial?

None of the above. The motive for this massive improvement of our local character was naught, the Chronicle confessed, but the "sledgehammer of expensive" gasoline.

Not bad.

What the Chronicle could not do, however, is take that next small step and give credit to the market system (by name) for reducing demand for gasoline and store-bought food and thereby increasing demand for substitutes. The "healthy behaviors" that sent a tingle up the Chronicle's leg are best understood as instances of rational economic behavior by consumers, evidence that the economic system is responding, as ever, to price signals.

But just as the Chronicle never, ever praises America -- see, e.g., the paper's sad response to the Fourth of July -- it can also never credit the market system for its good works. To do so would offend deeply held views on the superiority of government programs over the market as a way to run the economy and our lives.

The second thing the Chronicle can never do is follow to its natural conclusion the principle that so thoroughly delights them here -- namely that since high commodity prices induce so many "healthful behaviors," $4-a-gallon gasoline is not the problem, it's the solution, the thing to be desired.

Call it "embracing the sledgehammer of high gasoline prices."

Honest liberals have long believed this. As a consequence, they support high taxes on oil and gasoline for the very purposes of dampening demand and, perversely, dampening supply at the same time by capturing more of the pump price for government programs.

That's what Senator Obama and the Democrats now wish to do. If put in control of both the White House and Congress, that's what they will do.

A big problem for the liberals is that the present regime of high prices will naturally induce, not just the "healthy behaviors" the Chronicle favors on the demand side, but also those the rest of us favor on the supply side: the drilling of more wells, the refining of more gasoline, and, perforce, the production and sale of more gasoline at a lower price.

The horror!

Still, though the editorialists can never speak well of the market or call for higher gasoline prices, they could for one glorious day besot themselves with visions of a Houston almost worthy of the Chronicle -- packed onto buses with ten-speeds dangling off the back, chewing on arugula and cucumbers like famine-starved Africans.

UPDATE: Thanks to "Lose an Eye" and blogHOUSTON for the link.